Challenge accepted
In his latest reflection on places and pathways, Will Gore retraces his steps to figure out how he ended up with a bow and arrow in central Stockholm in the middle of the night
“Are you ready for the challenge?” asked the man I had just met.
In all honesty, I wasn’t sure I was – not least because I had no idea what he was talking about. I laughed and nodded, assuming it was some sort of joke that had been lost in translation.
We had met his girlfriend the day before; Freya, a Stockholm local, had helped to organise the conference we were attending in the city. I and another delegate from the UK had got chatting with her, the three of us noting that we were about the only people there under the age of 30.
On the first afternoon of the event, all of Sweden had been stunned when the country’s foreign minister, Anna Lindh, was attacked by a stranger in a department store. The next morning, conference proceedings were halted when it was announced that she had died of her wounds. Our hosts were visibly upset; with Lindh’s assailant on the loose, the nation was left shaken.
Perhaps in an attempt to lift the gloom, Freya suggested that she and her boyfriend could take us, her two new British pals, out for dinner and show us around Stockholm. We readily agreed.
Her partner, Chris, had a few years on the rest of us and had the kind of face that made him seem older still – lined and pitted. He was also the sort of person you occasionally meet in foreign cities who immediately gives the impression of knowing every detail of what goes on there. His English was good but not impeccable, which is why we laughed off his first reference to “the challenge”.
But as we moved from bar to restaurant, he asked again: “Are you feeling ready?” I chuckled a little more nervously this time. “The challenge is approaching...”
We ate at a Thai place and the wine flowed. Perhaps it was simply one of those lucky encounters when random personalities click, or maybe it was the added intensity than hung in the air as a result of Lindh’s murder; either way, the four of us hit it off like long lost schoolmates. Chris told us we should skip dessert at the restaurant and go to an ice cream parlour instead. “It is on the way to the challenge,” he added gleefully.
By this stage I was giddy with laughter and alcohol. The constant references to a forthcoming “challenge” had started to feel absurd and I merely brushed them off as some bizarre display of bravado.
For all that Stockholm was on edge, it was not particularly quiet. There may have been a killer on the loose, but people were still out and about in numbers. We walked through the streets to buy our ice creams, then meandered on, our hosts telling us random titbits about their home city.
Quite suddenly, in the middle of a narrow road lined by shops, Chris stopped. Pulling a set of keys out of his pocket, he announced with a steely glint in his eye: “It is time for the challenge.”
Even several sheets to the wind, I hesitated. We Brits glanced at one another. Chris was fitting his keys into the door of a shop, the window of which was filled with bows and arrows.
Now, at this point in the story, what you really want to hear is that we ran away as fast as we could, discovering later that “Chris” was the killer of Anna Lindh. Or that “Chris” used his crazed archery skills to pinion me by the shirtsleeves and trouser crotch to a man-sized target in a dark precursor to the kind of activity that is now practically de rigueur on Britain’s Got Talent.
In fact, we neither ran nor suffered grievous injury, though what came next was still unusual. The shop, it turned out, was a family business and we were here for an archery lesson – at approaching midnight, after at least five drinks.
What’s more, once we had managed to hit a target from 10 yards, Chris took us across the road and had us firing arrows over the street, through the open door and into the bullseye. Passersby, of whom there were a few, examined us with surprising equanimity, all things considered.
Had the police come along at that moment, I might not remember the evening so fondly. As it is, I took from it two important lessons: enjoy the friendship of strangers; and always be ready for the challenge.
Chris took us across the road and had us firing arrows over the street. Passersby examined us with surprising equanimity, all things considered